“It felt like modern consumption was really broken,” says cofounder and CEO Tina Sharkey. Millennial consumers don’t want to buy their parents’ brands, she argues, and all brands are too expensive, marked up to cover the costs of distribution, warehousing and retail space. By eliminating what she refers to as this “brand tax,” she figured that Brandless could slash the costs of basic packaged consumer goods that people buy regularly, and potentially become a significant player in a $2 trillion market. The company has raised more than $50 million in venture capital from New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures and others, at an undisclosed valuation, in an effort to take on consumer-goods giants like Procter & Gamble and General Mills. “We’re unapologetically a brand, but we’re reimagining what it means to be a brand today,” she says.

Sharkey, 53, co-founded iVillage, the online media company for women. She has also been president of parenting and pregnancy site BabyCenter, and, most recently, was CEO of Sherpa Foundry, which helps connect older non-tech companies with digital ones. She teamed up with Leffler, 39, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of skin-care company Yes To and school-supplies firm Yoobi, who will serve as chairman. The two, who had met in Mill Valley Calif., where she lives and he did until recently, figured they could use her knowledge of online communities and his of consumer products to reinvent the industry. “Ido was really bothered by the idea that if people really understood what things cost versus what they pay for them there would be rioting in the streets,” Sharkey says.

So they began to study what products consumers use most often, where they weren’t getting good values, and talking with contract manufacturers about creating new products for their new venture. They work with dozens of manufacturers (Sharkey declined to specify an exact number), most of which are in the United States, that have the capacity to produce better-for-you products in quantity. In each case, they created one product – organic, non-GMO, without additives – per category, rather than offerings consumers choice, something that helps keeps costs down and also focuses consumers.